All Public Ebola Growth Models Are Wrong, And NONE Are Useful To The Public

UPDATE: 11/14/14
CDC now admits

"The numbers of cases projected, based on an exponential growth model that used early epidemic trends and assumed no effective interventions, did not materialize"

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm63e1114a2.htm?s_cid=mm63e1114a2_x

UPDATE: 10/20/14 
Its interesting to note that the Johns Hopkins Center of Advanced Modeling agrees with our analysis and Ebola modeling curve
http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4511957/johnhopkins-agrees-potrblogcom-ebola-model

Original post below
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"All models are wrong, but some are useful" is a well known quote by statistician George Edward Pelham Box. Unfortunately we have not seen a single useful Ebola model published anywhere.

All published Ebola models basically follow an uncontrolled cockroach reproduction premise (as shown below). In short if all goes well, it doesn't take too long before the whole world becomes literally knee deep in cockroaches. Of course in the real world, even though cockroaches are prolific, we don't use snow plows to clear them off the streets. The only thing these models are useful for are separating taxpayers from their money

The reality of these Ebola growth models is that the driving assumptions are valid only for modeling an Airborne spread in which countermeasures only slow that spread. And even then, these models are less than useful.

The reality is that if Ebola is contact spread via cultural behaviors, it's growth will follow a roller coaster type pattern as seen below.

Unlike the Ebola models presented in the media, a useful model would give insight into the "Behavioral Inflection Point" shown in the graph above.
Insights such as:

1. Are people fleeing to new geographic regions PRIOR to infection risk being high
2. What percentage of those fleeing are infected?
3. In what time frame must behavior changing information be supplied to avoid geographic spread
4. What is the influence of this Geographic node on the spread of Ebola to the Global network
5. What is the most effective use of countermeasures across the Global network

From what we know of West Africa

1. Rapid global transportation was shut down prior to large scale infection
2. Populated areas are altering interpersonal behavior to avoid spread
3. Deeply held cultural death cult behaviors are still ongoing
4. Population flight is still a major concern

What we expect:

1. The outbreak may rapidly self contain and rebound later as a sexually transmitted disease

2. An outbreak spread into Winter Climate regions has the potential to allow any equatorially suppressed airborne transmission routes to become the primary EXPLOSIVE infectious route.

Sources:

US ARMY Says EBOLA = FLU in Airborne Stability, Needs Winter Weather To Go Airborne